It does not matter how trivial these questions or observations are. Often, the apparently simple question is the most difficult to answer. Occasionally someone tells me about seeing something that is 'new to science'. In 1991 I received a letter about a wintering blackcap that removed stamens from mahonia flowers. I could not find a reference to this habit in any of my books so I wrote a Nature Note on the subject. I received 36 letters about birds eating mahonia stamens, mostly of blackcaps but also house sparrows and blue tits. As a result I wrote a note on this previously unrecorded behaviour for the monthly magazine British Birds.